1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tool-changing operation of an automatic machining center, and more particularly to a multi-axis automatic tool-changing system for an automatic machining center.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Automatic machining center generally comprises a workpiece-holding table, a mainframe, a plurality of principal machining axes disposed on the mainframe, a tool magazine disposed adjacent to one side of the mainframe and a tool changing arm. The operation of this automatic machining center is to use the tools on the machining principal axes to perform the machining in the predetermined forms. The tool arm can be rotated to exchange the tools on the machining principal axes with the selected tools of the tool magazine.
For a lot of the manufacturers, the automatic machining center is quite expensive. But according to the abovementioned form, at a time, only one main axis can be used to perform only one type of machining operation onto one workpiece, so the production capacity is limited. One feasible method of solving this limited condition is to install a group or more than one group of machining assistant principal axes on the standard automatic machining center in a direction which is parallel to the principal axes, so as to form a multi-axis mainframe. The application of the assistant principal axes determined by the design, for example, the assistant principal axis may be used to provide the high rotation speed and low horsepower machining, but the principal axis continues to perform the low rotation speed and high torque cutting. The improved multi-axis can increase the number of the finished products within the same time. However, the facing problem is that it needs to avoid collision at the time of the multi tool arm changing during operation.
The present invention has arisen to mitigate and/or obviate the afore-described disadvantages.